Taking Another Look at Mickey Mantle’s Blast
The most famous homer ever hit in Washington has gotten a lot of press lately. It was hit by a New York Yankee more than 50 years ago.
Mickey Mantle crushed a pitch from Senators hurler Chuck Stobbs over the left centerfield bleachers at Griffith Stadium in April 1953.
The ball completely left the stadium, and was later found in the yard of a house on Oakdale Place NW. Legend holds that Mantle’s shot had traveled 565 feet.
Despite time and the Dead Balls Era™, it remains the longest HR in baseball history.
Stobb’s death earlier this month brought the homer back in the news. And of all the pieces written, none was more fascinating than the one posted on the washingtonpost.com’s PostMortem blog by obituary writer Matt Schudel.
After the Post’s Stobb’s obit appeared, Schudel got a call at the paper from Donald Dunaway. Back in 1953, Dunaway was the 10-year-old kid who found Mantle’s homer on Oakdale Place.
The official story had long been that Yankees PR man Arthur “Red” Patterson had left the stadium after Mantle’s at-bat and brought it back after paying a local kid $1 for finding it.
Dunaway was that local kid, and his version, which I had never read before, is that he was the only person even looking for the ball, and that he brought it back to the stadium by himself, and for doing that he was paid $100 by the Yankees. Dunaway says he also was given another baseball.
Apparently, as much as has been written about the homer through the years, nobody had ever bothered locating the guy who really found it.
Kudos to Schudel for getting Dunaway’s tale out there. I want more!
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July 31st, 2008 at 9:09 am
There were a lot of firsts that April 17, 1953. It was my first game ever (I was almost 8 years old) and Chuck Stobbs first game as a Senator, though I didn’t know that at the time. I was sitting in the left-center field bleachers and saw this ball just disappear. It really got there quickly. It was more of a line drive than a high fly ball. Certainly, at the time, I had no idea about the significance of that home run, though I knew it was quite a shot. I became an “old” Senator fan until they moved to Minnesota…and still pulled for them a little bit when they were the Twins. In the late 1980’s I was fortunate enough to get an autographed ball from Mickey Mantle at a local sports function. In 2002, I met Chuck Stobbs through a mutual friend. We actually talked for quite awhile about the “old” Senators, and I truly feel he had a good time talking about that time when baseball was great. Mustering up enough courage to see if he would agree to give me his autograph….I elected to see if he would sign the same ball that Mantle had signed around 20 years previously. He agreed to it…and signed it. He said it is the only the 2nd ball that his and Mantle’s autograph was on the same ball. The first one being the day of the big shot over the left-center bleachers. I also have a picture of he and I together that same day. I will treasure that ball and picture forever. Chuck Stobbs was a very kind man, and I will miss him a great deal. Stan Jenkins